Western Digital matches Seagate's 32 TB HAMR capacity with 11-platter ePMR HDDs
Blocks & Files, Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
Western Digital has matched Seagate's 32 TB HAMR disc capacity by adding an 11th platter to its conventional disk drives.
Seagate has developed heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology for smaller bit areas using a more coercive and stable magnetic recording medium, with laser-created heat used to help change the magnetic polarity of the bit area, thereby writing the binary data. It is making 30 TB Exos 30 drives and 32 TB shingled (overlapping write track) drives, each with ten platters, using HAMR technology, although these are not yet shipping, being still in a qualification phase.